The technology giant’s Cork base now employs 4,000 people with a further 2,500 people employed indirectly “in the local area”, according to Apple. Only the UK has more Apple employees than Ireland, although this is due to its 37 Apple retail stores, which employ an average of 100 retail staff per store.

The Cork office, which has been open since 1980 and was once primarily a manufacturing site, is Apple’s only global corporate headquarters outside the US. The majority working there are now engaged in non-manufacturing roles such as finance, supply chain management and customer support.

Apple’s new figures show that it has redistributed more than $6.5bn (€4.9bn) to software and app developers across Europe, which represents a third of what the company has redistributed to developers around the world to date. It says that its operations and technology ecosystems have resulted in 629,000 European jobs at present, around 500,000 of which are app development jobs.

It also says that Europe is home to 4,500 Apple suppliers, including several of the company's top 200 global suppliers. It says that this has created “thousands of jobs” in Switzerland, France, Italy, Austria, Germany and Malta.

The company also said that it now has 101 Apple retail stores in eight European countries. A spokesman said that he could not say if or when the company would open a retail store in Ireland. Apple’s App Store now has over 1.2m apps and 75bn app downloads.

One of the App Store’s newest stars is Dublin-based Soundwave, with over 1m downloads. The app allows people to share and compare songlists and enter group chats.

“We’re in 190 countries around the world and now have a team of 10 people here,” said Brendan O’Driscoll, co-founder and chief executive of the Rathmines firm. “We couldn’t really do that without the App Store. We’re seeing huge traction in places as far away as Japan.”